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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Guest Post: Call night hijinks

An email from the husband of a resident on-call that caused serious laughter by said resident at the nursing station at 1 am.

Hi Babe,

Here are your call night pics. Kind of a rough night here. I came home to find that [Cat 1] had puked all over our comforter so that's in the wash. I was in the bathroom with R and he was playing in the cabinet...busy and pulling things out so I thought I could take a quick pee. Right as I finished, he quickly turned towards the toilet and as I was zipping my fly and reaching down for him he darted to the toilet bowl and put both his hands directly into my fresh pee (gross) so I grabbed him before he could put his hands anywhere and washed his hands for like 5 minutes in the sink.

R was really tired from the time we got home so I started to feed him dinner, which he fussed the whole way through but still ate a decent amount. Then came bath time...so we're about 75% through the bath and there's a knock at the front door. Baby boy was sitting down playing and very busy with the ducks so I made a quick run for the door and it was the next door neighbor wanting to talk about the easement again. I said "Sorry dude, gotta run - my son is in the bath and I can't leave him unattended, come back tomorrow" and basically shut the door in his face. I ran back into the bathtub to find R standing up, holding his business and peeing into the bath. I guess he just wanted to be like Dad since he just saw me about an hour before that urinating into the toilet. End of bath time...I grabbed him out of the bath before the pee circulated through the water and drained the tub.

Bottle time and he was pretty fussy through the entire bottle but still being a little sweetheart but he was just really tired! He just now fell asleep after about 30-45 min of yelling and moaning. I walk from his room to go put the comforter into the dryer and [Cat 2] has peed in front of the litter box. There was litter literally all over the laundry room. 20 minutes to clean that mess up.

I hope you're having a good call night because these 3 dudes totally wore me out! I'm going to be hitting bed early tonight!

I love you and we miss you, looking forward to having you home tomorrow and the good news is that you have Saturday off!!!

I think this an example of how technology has enriched our lives. I found internship in the 90's very isolating. My co-residents were terrific and helped keep it human, but an emails or texts from loved ones can really keep you grounded.

Mothers in Medicine is a group blog by physician-mothers, writing about the unique challenges and joys of tending to two distinct patient populations, both of whom can be quite demanding. We are on call every. single. day.

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